


sweet

by kuro49



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: F/M, Post-Operation Pitfall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-09 00:40:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3229718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mako Mori does not want what she cannot have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sweet

**Author's Note:**

> These two managed to get one more out of me.

She is sitting across from him.

In other words, he sits down across from her, sliding an envelope containing a sheet of paper folded into threes. And she can tell without seeing the content that these are deliberate, crisp folds, like he isn’t looking for her permission. He is here out of courtesy, respect, and for her, these two are very different things.

But for him, she cannot say.

For him, what she can say is this though, and so.

She tells him, “No.”

Adds on _Mr. Hansen_ , in haste, as an apology she is not ready to say.

He falters but takes the envelope back nonetheless. Takes back his resignation letter from the position of the Marshal and leaves her office with only a glance at the way her hands are clutching at the other.

White knuckles atop of lacquered wood.

 

He loses a son.

She loses a father.

The rest of the world loses much more than that.

 

She sits down across from him.

This time, her legs don’t swing from where her feet can just touch the ground.

This time, there is the swing of one leg over the other, a movement that has her dangling heels finally falling to the ground. The clatter doesn’t wake anyone in what’s left of the Shatterdome, it barely even registers in the simple square of an office she calls her own.

“You’re a natural.”

Among many things, this is what he tells her.

“At what?” She asks, feeling like this isn’t quite the good idea he looked to be when he knocks and she opens her door to Marshal Hercules Hansen carrying a six-pack and a bottle of the really good stuff.

He also brings two tumblers with him but they haven’t touched that, opting for sharing the bottle, passing it between the two of them instead. And he tells it to her through the pain, bitten back for years and years and years on end, and the loss enough to fill the Pacific Ocean twice over.

“At this,” He tells her, with three in him and the fourth going down smooth, “At mourning.”

She looks at him, at them, at the two of them drowning the dead in tears they haven’t cried and beers they’ve already drank most of. He smiles, and his smile only falters when she tips her can at him.

“And I would know, Miss Mori.”

When he follows her motion, it is not quite a toast as it is a salute.

 

He doesn’t become her father.

And she, she doesn’t become his surrogate daughter.

 

She is sitting down across from him.

In an office that belonged to sensei, one that the newly appointed Marshal refuses to call his own, it is not a lie if she doesn’t say a thing to his, “You don’t need me here.”

He is a crumpled piece of paper left out in the rain, shreds of a whole, torn by hand and thrown into a fire to burn.

His shoulders don’t slump and he remains at attention even when he hasn’t been a soldier for a long time now, not since he has joined the PPDC, not since this war has begun and ended and took everything he has ever loved with it to the bottom of the Pacific.

“No,” She sits straight in her seat, across from a man she should be calling the Marshal, but she can’t bring herself to do much these days, “I do not need you here.”

It has been a long time is what neither admits to the other.

What Mako learns is that she wants him here.

The curve of her hand across his jaw doesn’t bring them closer. Hercules Hansen is not a sweet man and Mako is nobody’s sweetheart. She is not about to push him for something he is not ready to give.

Mako Mori does not want what she cannot have.

“I accept your resignation.”

It has been a long time since she has seen him smile in a way that doesn’t remind her of losing another thing. She figures she can take one more loss.

 

When she opens her top drawer, there is no one across the desk and she is not sitting down, his letter sits on top of hers.

“And I accept yours, Miss Mori.”

When she looks up, he is standing by her door looking like a life after the war.

 

XXX Kuro


End file.
